The southern half of the United States shares latitude with northern Africa, not Europe. We've been in heat for the past 5 months that apparently has killed 35k Europeans. For us that's a Tuesday.

Yes I am putting on a hoodie when it's 53F out. I won't be shamed about that. Just like I wouldn't ever shame you about installing AC, it's glorious.

And this is how you can make a conspiracy out of any group of facts if you are inclined.

High heat and dry conditions do increase wildfire risk.
Rural areas are more prone to wildfires as they have increased vegetation.
Rural areas tend to be more conservative.

Therefore it must be the state government playing villains and shutting off the power to conservative rural areas because they are evil. They have to be evil of course so conservatives can justify supporting the most unhinged actions by their politicians because they are fighting evil.

It couldn't possibly be that rural areas have higher wildfire risk, a fact published in a map!

https://files.cpuc.ca.gov/safe...

You do know also that nowhere in America is like totally red or blue right? Like even in Los Angeles which went 64% for Harris but that means 1.1 million people in LA voted for Trump. On the flipside something like Shasta county which went 67% for Trump there still 27,000 Harris voters but they're just collateral damage in the power wars of course. Gotta break a few eggs!

This is America, if we're ever in a situation where we have to choose between a business or data center having power 24/7 with 99.99% reliability (1 hour or less) and residential customers having some reduced level like 99.9% (8 hours of outage a year) then you can be certain that's how it's going to play out.

Where we draw the line is really the only debate. Like 95% is more like having 36 hours a month with an outage. Maybe even rolling blackouts every week, so some people don't have power on the same day every week. If that is what is necessary to keep datacenters running, you can bet that the tech billionaires and their buddies in the government would find a way to keep their lights on, at the expense of keeping the lights off with regular people. (who are voters - which ought to be a serious political issue, but I don't think it is an issue anymore)

They're typically Lithium Iron Phosphate (LFP), good for 5000+ cycles before they degrade enough to be a problem. So charging every day they're good for about 10 to 15 years.

In practice, they'll have a site with multiple generations of batteries. So they're always extending their capacity and keeping old batteries in service. Eventually replacing degraded packs with new equipment when it is cheaper (in terms of storage capacity vs cost) to swap out the equipment than to simply add new.

US DoE averted rolling blackouts for 17 states back in July. (California not on that list)

Texas had a rolling blackout back in 2021, which I believe was the last rolling blackout in the continental US.

And there was an unplanned multi-state blackout in the Northeast way back in 2003 due to software+human error. I'm a bit surprised with all the cyber security issues we have today that these kinds of blackouts aren't happening every year.

Public Safety Power Shutoff (PSPS), there is one going on almost every week in some part of the state. I get maybe two a year, if it is going to be a windy day and it is fairly dry they'll cut my power for 6-12 hours typically.
There's several PSPS going on in the Sacramento valley and northern Sierra because it's dry and windy right now. (September 9th to 14th). PG&E has about 1000 people working on it right now.

The way brownouts are evaluated is quite broken. There is little logged with regulatory agencies on sags unless a customer complaint has been filed. If that isn't working for you then escalate to CPUC's Consumer Information Management System (CIMS). This is the route you can go if you have reported brownouts or sags or other service issues and there appears to have been no action taken by SCE.

Last week it was high-90's and low 100's along the central coast (Santa Cruz & Monterey). It cooled down at night, but I also don't have A/C because I almost never need it, maybe for 3-5 days every 3-4 years it would be appreciated.

San Francisco is its own particularly bizarre climate compared to the rest of California or even the Bay Area. Just going from the tip of the peninsula to the South Bay can add +20F degrees to the temperature. It can be 75F in SF and 95F-105F in San Jose. Sometimes SF gets to 90F weather most years, specially downtown, even while the Outer Sunset is buried in fog by the next morning.

But last week had some parts hitting high 90's in most of the City, and it was 100F in The Castro and Corona Heights I am told. Very few residential buildings have A/C in SF. Not central air and not even a window unit. With mini-splits getting cheaper and easy to retrofit to old buildings, we're going to see more SF residence adopt A/C to deal with the hotter weather that has become more frequent.

Current battery capacity only last a few hours after sunset, and starts charging at sunrise. There's a nice graph in this article that shows about a 4 hour coverage with batteries.

Better than nothing, but the shorter daylight hours of winter tends to highlight the limitations we currently have with our battery capacity.

On that note any Blizzard employees who had to suffer under Bobby Kotick deserve a raise.

National Student Association, The American Federation of Labor-Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL-CIO), ...

Arguing with me in your mind, widdle cawardette? There are many different levels, and don't for a New York minute think that if you stand with Trump, means you are a conservative. All you are is a widdle caward, who was a prime example of the need for your daddy to pull out before he came, and done the world a favor by spilling his splooge on the floor, where at least it could be recycled without producing a waste of oxygen.

Or are you a fifth grader, thinking that he can effectively ytroll a person who can grind him down, and feed him to Facebook as an example of the need for a license to have cildrfen.

If you are that fifth grader, make certain you give mommy and daddy their laptop back, ans make certain to delete those special pictures you enjoy so much. Don't want mommy and daddy to think you need chemically castrates, yaknow, Oh yeah, and mommy wanted to know why some on the keys on her laptop got stuck, and why your socks are all stuck together. Jezuz H Kryste , coward, at least use paper towels and toss them in your future prospects folder AKA the trash.

Haven't done a Saturday night Curb Stomping in a while - I think you so very much!

And yet, it extends beyond the stupid. My wife, who is very smart, (VP at a construction associated corporation) but very non-technical, is scared AF about AI. And me trying to explain my "insiders outlook" just doesn't sway her.

She looks at me askance sometimes when I tell her I use AI, but think the concepts at the moment are wrong...."How can you be both, honey?" And trying to explain localized AI to a person who thinks it's all about humongous Data Centers using up groundwater, destroying farmland, and requiring as much power as the rest of the country uses for themselves...... damn, I wish I could get her off of Facebook!

Otherwise, yes, there are plenty of stupid people around.

Keep in mind, I have no issues with people being against Data Centers. When the paradigm changes, and it won't be too long, those centers will be pretty useless - maybe repurposed as a fulfillment center?

Doctor Olsoc notes that one does not have to be conservative to be batshit crazy. Our friend needs some thorazine,

Plenty of people, especially around here bemoan that there are no more dumb TVs and well, there are! It's just like most things in life there are drawbacks but there is a choice.

But if my last sentence didn't make it clear I agree, I have a Hisense TV. Very nice but I'll never connect it to anything besides a receiver.